


Cabinet Mook

by StarmanSymphony



Category: MOTHER: Cognitive Dissonance
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, game manipulation, games not acting as they should
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-12-07 17:32:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18238067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarmanSymphony/pseuds/StarmanSymphony
Summary: The newest GemThieves machine on the Mothership is certainly not what it seems.





	Cabinet Mook

**Author's Note:**

> i listened to cabinet man One (1) time then my brain threw this au at me

Larice was ecstatic when he heard that another GemThieves machine had come to the Mothership. It was his favourite game, after all. He would be able to get the high score for the first time again, then fill up the leaderboard with his records alone if he was lucky. 

But, unfortunately, the one who had thought ahead. The new GemThieves machine would cycle through the barracks, and Barracks 3 was one of the last barracks the machine would visit before it took its place in the games room. 

_ ‘Fair,  _ Larice thought, _ ‘but it’s going to be  _ **_ages_ ** _ before it gets to Barracks 3. I think I might explode before it gets here!’ _

The wait for the new GemThieves machine to be cycled into his barracks seemed to get longer as each minute passed. Just over a week passed by, and finally, the new GemThieves machine had arrived in Barracks 3. 

Larice finished up his work as quickly as possible on the day the new GemThieves machine was cycled into Barracks 3. He rushed to his barracks, and there it was. Sitting right next to the first GemThieves machine in the barracks was the new one. It looked a little dinged up, but apparently, it was brought in from  _ Saturn.  _ What a GemThieves machine was doing on Saturn, Larice has no idea, but it made sense that the machine wouldn’t be in tip-top shape if had been there.

Larice hurriedly started a new game on the new GemThieves machine. The classic screen which showed the characters popped up, and then faded as Larice pressed one of the buttons. And then… Larice frowned. The characters were still there, but… the game displaying on the machine’s screen certainly wasn’t the GemThieves he knew. Instead of the looping blue-bordered maze, there was what looked like a grassy field. It was kind of hard to tell, what with the arcade machine’s limited colour palette. The main character could walk freely on this field, and the enemies would come to attack him in waves. The wave number was displayed in the top-left corner. It was weird that Larice hadn’t heard anything about the drastically different gameplay. 

Once Larice got used to the entirely different GemThieves, it was actually pretty easy. Or so he thought. Ten waves in, things got a lot more difficult. The waves jumped in speed, and there were more enemies. He was caught so off guard, he lost focus and got hit.

_ ‘Ten. A measly ten.’  _ Larice frowned at the strange GemThieves machine for a few seconds.  _ ‘I can do  _ **_way_ ** _ better than just ten!’ _

So he tried again. And again. And again. The waves of enemies got harder and harder, even starting to dance around the screen in various ways. He slowly got his high scores on the leaderboard, until it was full with his frustrated attempts to do even better. His work forced him to take breaks, but whenever he had free time, he would go back to the strange GemThieves machine.

During the whole crew’s break, Meca, Barracks 3’s Starman Super, looked over at Larice hunched in front of the odd GemThieves machine. 

“You alright over there? *whirr*” he asked.

Larice blinked. An enemy twirled into the main character, ending Larice’s thirty-somethingth attempt. He gestured to the arcade machine as he looked at Meca. “You threw me off focus! I was *beep* getting so close to wave 30!”

Meca chuckled to himself.

“Have you even  _ played  _ this one, Meca? *click* I swear, this game is going out of it’s way to frustrate me!”

“Larice, it’s an arcade game,” one of the other standard Starmen, Sindris, told him. “It’s not trying to frustrate you *whirr* because it’s not sentient.”

“And besides, everyone knows that special *click* editions are harder,” the other standard Starman in Barracks 3, Sacada, added.

“Special edition?” Larice echoed. He looked back at the GemThieves machine and said, “But this looks the same as the other one! *beep*”

“Well, it  _ was  _ found on Saturn,” Meca said. “Its ‘special edition’ sign was probably taken off.”

“I don’t think that’s how *click* arcade machines work,” Sindris told him.

Meca shrugged. “Whatever.”

Larice played the strange GemThieves machine for the rest of the break. After work, he went back to it and continued playing it into the night. The Starmen who were in charge of moving the GenThieves machine didn’t come to move it again after three days. They must have figured it would have been useless to try and take it away while it was in Barracks 3. 

While the other Starmen in his barracks had gone to sleep, Larice was still up, constantly trying to beat his own high scores. He might have been going crazy, but the game seemed to be getting harder every time he tried again. He could have just been getting tired. That sounded reasonable enough - he had been playing quite a lot over the last few days. But he had to get to Wave 50 at least now. This is what he had dug himself into.

Wave 30. Wave 35. Wave 40. Wave 45. Wave 49… You lose.

Larice groaned. He laid his head between the control stick and the buttons. For a while. When he looked up again, all he saw in the game over screen was vicious mockery. Of course, it couldn't actually mock him, since it was an arcade game.

An unfamiliar voice from an unknown source spoke out. “You really want to get to Wave 50, don’t you? You’re determined. I like that.” The voice sounded like a heavily compressed recording - telligible, but not very crisp.

Larice stood up straight and looked around the barracks.

“Did one of the Mooks wander over here again…?” Larice murmured to himself. He wandered over to the doorframe and peered into the hall.

“No no, back here.”

Larice looked back at the strange GemThieves machine.

“From…? *whirr*”

Larice walked back up to the GemThieves machine and stared at the screen. The game cut out, and static filled the screen. A face then appeared on the screen - a singular, blue eye and a wide, sharp-toothed grin. Larice flinched, and took a step back.

“Hi,” the GemThieves machine said.

Larice blinked. He stepped back toward the GemThieves machine now looking at him.

“You’re… sentient? *click” Larice asked.

“Of course I am!” the GemThieves machine snapped.

“But… GemThieves machines don’t usually talk… *whirr…* or have faces…”

“I thought it was obvious I wasn’t a normal GemThieves machine."

An air of silence lingered for a few moments, before Larice asked, “So, *beep* if you’re not a regular GemThieves machine, what are you?”

“Who - the name’s Malik,” the GemThieves machine, Malik, replied. “And you’re Larice. Before you ask - I’ve overheard everything.”

“That’s…” Larice paused. “...really frightening.”

Malik flashed another sharp-toothed grin.

“What happened to you? *click*” Larice asked.

“Well, y’see, that’s a bit of a story. Pull up a stool or something.”

Larice took the nearest stool from its spot near the table and placed it down in front of Malik. He promptly sat on it.

“Comfy?”

Larice nodded.

“Good. Now, originally, I wasn’t a GemThieves machine. I was a Mook, living off on the B Ring of Saturn. One day, this here GemThieves machine showed up outta the blue. I found it, and took it back to my house-slash-lab. I played it a little first before I started fiddling around with the programming. It wasn’t like anything I had ever messed with. But that was no big deal. I ended up making the game into something entirely new. But that wasn’t enough for me. I needed to go even further. So I put myself into the machine. My organs are in here and everything.”

Larice simply sat in awe.

“So… how much *beep* control over the game do you have?”

“All of it,” Malik grinned. “And I do control it most of the time. I like making it fiendishly hard. I like watching the player’s reactions.”

“You were manipulating *click* the waves of enemies the whole time?!” Larice exclaimed.

Malik frowned. “No it was a Mr. Saturn.”

“...Of course.” Larice glanced away from Malik. “I should have *whirr* figured it would have been you.”

He stood up and put his hands on the controls of the GemThieves machine. “Now to get back *click* to getting to Wave 50.”

“Woah, look. As I much as I love challenging you, you’ve been obsessing over my game for days now,” Malik said. “Don’t be like someone I knew. Get some rest.”

Larice let out a whirr of defeat. “Alright.”

Larice wandered over to his hyberpod and opened it up.

“One more thing!”

Larice looked over at Malik.

“Goodnight.”

“Oh. Goodnight! *whirr*”

Larice climbed into his hyberpod, and Malik switched the GemThieves machine off. Both of them were exhausted.


End file.
